Source: SMH Online

Channel Ten has rebounded from the humiliation that was Big Brother and is tearing younger viewers away from Channel Seven with Australian Idol, Thank God You’re Here and House.

The ABC is tearing older viewers away from both Seven and Nine with Midsomer Murders, and The Worst Jobs in History.

The result of this healthy competition was the closest-run week of the year, barely won by Seven with 27.6 per cent of the prime time audience, to Nine’s 27.0, Ten’s 23.1, ABC’s 17.3 and SBS’s 5.0.

What Australia watched, week ending August 11

1 THANK GOD YOU’RE HERE Ten 1,876,000
2 BORDER SECURITY Seven 1,828,000
3 RSPCA ANIMAL RESCUE Seven 1,684,000
4 MEDICAL EMERGENCY Seven 1,664,000
5 AUSTRALIAN IDOL – AUDITION 1 Ten 1,649,000
6 SEVEN NEWS – SUN Seven 1,601,000
7 SEA PATROL Nine 1,581,000
8 HOUSE Ten 1,578,000
9 NINE NEWS SUNDAY Nine 1,520,000
10 SURF PATROL Seven 1,462,000
11 AUSTRALIAN IDOL – AUDITION 2 Ten 1,455,000
12 GETAWAY Nine 1,452,000
13 SEVEN NEWS Seven 1,444,000
14 ALL SAINTS Seven 1,426,000
15 MIDSOMER MURDERS ABC 1,423,000

Source: Commercial Radio Australia

Commercial radio advertising revenue has grown to $53.1 million in the month of July 2007, a rise of 14.6 per cent since July last year.

Perth and Sydney had substantial growth, rising 24.8 per cent and 12.1 per cent respectively.

Commercial Radio Australia CEO Joan Warner said that the capital city markets all performed strongly.

    “This is a very strong start to the financial year and demonstrates that commercial radio remains a powerful force and continues to adapt successfully to a dynamic media environment.”

Investment in online and digital radio – the latter is set to be released in January 2009 – should also pay dividends, according to Warner.

“Radio and the internet are both instant, conversational media that appeal to the connected generation, so there are clear benefits in using radio and online advertising in combination.

“The launch of digital radio in a little over a year’s time will also give radio a new lease of life.”

Source: The Spy Report

Australian viewers will be able to see top programs from the United States including House, Heroes and the controversial new series Californication within days of their American airings from next month.

Changing media use and Internet downloads have forced the hand of Australian free-to-air networks to hold off airing new episodes for five months as per normal at this time of year.

While new TV series air from September in the States, they are delayed in Australia until February when the next ratings season begins. But due to a huge jump in Internet downloads and general web chatter about programs, most of which have weekly cliff-hangers, have forced Australian networks to change their tactics.

While it means local fans will see the latest episodes within days or weeks of US viewers, the move also carries risks for Australian networks.

The Nine and Ten networks have tried the idea, with Jericho, The OC and Survivor airing in line with the States, but Seven will up the ante and will screen off-the-satellite episodes of Heroes and Prison Break from next month. Both started out as monster hits in February with more than 2 million viewers months after airing in the US – but shed half their audiences as audiences saught to find out what was in store on the Internet.

Figures reveal both were the most downloaded shows in Australia this year, and Seven is experimenting by airing them so quickly.

Ten has gone further and will air Life, about a policeman wrongly sentenced for a crime he didn’t commit, and Californication, starring David Duchovny as a sex-addicted novelist and contains extreme language, nudity and attitude, from late next month.

But the risk is both of Ten’s shows have not yet been aired in the US and could be axed within weeks of what is the US’s new season. Ten will also broadcast fresh episodes of sure fire hit House to boost its end of year ratings.

Both networks series will break during summer non-ratings period and return in February. But the downside is that both will have first-half year holes in their schedules next year when the series would otherwise air.

“There are certain shows which have such a global buzz that audiences are connected to and we have to dip our toe in the water this way to see what happens,” a Seven spokesman told The Daily Telegraph.

Source: Glenda Korporaal, The Australian

THE 2008 Olympics in Beijing will be the first true internet Games, with the International Olympic Committee keen to exploit the advantages and reach of the new media, according to Australia’s senior IOC member Kevan Gosper.

In an interview with Media this week, Mr Gosper, who is head of the IOC Press Commission, said it was the big media groups covering the Olympics – including news agencies, newspapers and television broadcasters – that were keen to push the envelope on the use of the internet to cover the Games.

And the IOC was also keen to use the internet to promote the Games to a younger audience.

Mr Gosper said the IOC Press Commission had initially been concerned about protecting the rights of the officially accredited Olympic media when looking at issues such as whether athletes should be allow to write blogs during the Games.

Read the rest of this entry »

Source: Amanda Meade, The Australian

THE Nine Network is in turmoil once again after new boss Jeff Browne offered news chief Garry Linnell’s job to a young gun from Seven.

Behind Linnell’s back, Browne has been trying to lure the 31-year-old executive producer of Sunrise, Adam Boland, to join Nine when his contract with Seven runs out in February.

Browne has told Boland he has the mandate of the PBL board to hire him to revolutionise the way Nine does news and to "smash the Nine news culture", which he believes is expensive, outdated and is full of "dead wood".

Sources say Browne’s grand ideas to give Nine a point of difference include shifting the 6pm news bulletin and developing a nightly news and entertainment show starring his best friend Eddie McGuire.

Browne believes McGuire, who stepped down as CEO in May and is now earning $5 million a year, is "the network’s No1 priority".

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Source: Richard Gluyas, The Australian

DRAMATIC changes in the news cycle and the advent of social networking websites such as MySpace meant newspaper companies had to completely reinvent themselves, News Limited chairman and chief executive John Hartigan said yesterday.

Mr Hartigan said the challenge for traditional media was to spread its brands and become part of the online scene, where consumers wanted to be part of the process and not just passive receivers of content.

"Customers are contributing their own content, and the line between the traditional content producers and consumers starts to blur," he told the annual Pacific Area Newspaper Publishers Association conference in Melbourne.

"We are moving from a speech to a conversation."

Mr Hartigan said the extension of print brands on to other media platforms reflected the arrival of a 24/7 news cycle that was changing the industry dynamics "forever".

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Owner of regional network WIN Television, Bruce Gordon, has renewed his threat to dump the group’s affiliation with the Nine Network in the lead-up to negotiations over a new program supply deal.

Mr Gordon said WIN could obtain programs itself if the two companies failed to come to an agreement.

“We’re out of contract and they keep threatening to turn us off,” Mr Gordon told the Sydney Morning Herald. “We said, ‘Go ahead: take your programming off’, and we think it would be a lot of fun if they did. We can program this network. When I bought this network in 1979, there were no affiliation agreements.”

Negotiations were due to be resumed this morning after stalling in June.

PBL Media, owner of Nine, wants WIN to pay 40 per cent of its revenue in return for programming, up from the 32 per cent it pays under the current agreement, which officially expired on July 1.

Mr Gordon wants the fees reduced to reflect poor ratings and to bring them into line with the 29 per cent of revenue that WIN’s main regional competitors, Prime and Southern Cross Broadcasting, pay their partners at Seven and Ten.

“Affiliation fees could come to somewhere in the area of $170 million for our group, and that on a 10-year period is $1.7 billion if we were to pay it, but we are certainly not going to,” Mr Gordon said.

The 78-year-old, who divides his time between Bermuda and Wollongong, headed Paramount Pictures’s international television sales division for 23 years and says he knows “a thing or two about programming”.

He said Nine had made some “ridiculous” programming decisions over the past year, including replacing a popular US soap opera, The Young and The Restless, with a daytime chat show, The Catch-Up, which was axed in June, and airing the late-night show Quizmania.

Most watched programs:
1 Prime News Monday to Friday PRIME 80000

2 Seven News Monday to Friday PRIME 70000

3 RSPCA Animal Rescue PRIME 58000

4 Medical Emergency PRIME 57000

5 McLeods Daughters NBN 54000

6 Cold Case NBN 53000

7 Deal or no Deal PRIME 52000

8 All Saints PRIME 49000

9 Sea Patrol NBN 49000

10 Without A Trace NBN 47000

Station ratings:

                    Week 31
2007     Week 31
2006     Prog
2007     Prog
2006

NBN                 29.1                 34.2                     30.3             33.2

PRIME             31.6                 30.7                     31.9             29.8

TEN                 23.2                 19.0                     19.8             20.3

ABC                 11.6                 11.9                     13.1             12.3

SBS                 4.5                     4.1                     4.8                4.4

Southern Cross TEN had it’s  best week of the year last week thanks to the Big Brother finale and Thank God You’re Here, giving the station rare Top 10 placings.

Most watched programs:
1 NBN Evening News Sunday NBN 112000

2 Sea Patrol NBN 101000

3 Thank God You’re Here TEN 96000

4 Big Brother The Winner Announced TEN 95000

5 Friday Night Football Bulldogs v Eels NBN 90000

6 NBN Evening News Monday to Friday NBN 89000

7 Getaway NBN 85000

8 A Current Affair NBN 84000

9 Big Brother Finale Night TEN 84000

10 Spicks & Specks ABC 83000

Station ratings:

                    Week 31
2007     Week 31
2006     Prog
2007     Prog
2006

NBN                 31.2                     37.3                 35.1                 36.9

PRIME             23.1                     21.4                 25.0                 22.5

TEN                 23.4                     18.9                 17.8                 19.5

ABC                 15.6                     16.7                 16.2                 15.6

SBS                 6.7                         5.7                 5.9                   5.5

Source: SMH online

Channel Ten should have won last week, with Thank God You’re Here and House riding high and Big Brother reaching its climax over two nights. But these hits weren’t enough to counter Seven’s lock on older viewers who love fly-on-the-wall documentaries and Nine’s lock on older viewers who find Lisa McCune’s acting credible.

At week’s end, the average prime time audience shares were: Seven 27.9 per cent, Nine 25.9, Ten 24.3, ABC 16.3 and SBS 5.6.

What Australia watched, week ending August 4
1 BIG BROTHER – WINNER ANNOUNCED Ten 1,902,000
2 THANK GOD YOU’RE HERE Ten 1,844,000
3 BORDER SECURITY Seven 1,693,000
4 MEDICAL EMERGENCY Seven 1,689,000
5 RSPCA ANIMAL RESCUE Seven 1,685,000
6 SEVEN NEWS – SUN Seven 1,655,000
7 SEA PATROL Nine 1,601,000
8 BIG BROTHER – FINALE NIGHT Ten 1,581,000
9 HOUSE Ten 1,538,000
10 60 MINUTES Nine 1,537,000
11 NINE NEWS SUNDAY Nine 1,536,000
12 GETAWAY Nine 1,471,000
13 SEVEN NEWS Seven 1,463,000
14 ALL SAINTS Seven 1,453,000
15 BIG BROTHER DOUBLE LIVE EVICTION Ten 1,435,000